Views, Thoughts, and Suggestions on Recent Items in the News

“I Just Had One Drink.”

Why is it so hard to get legislators to pass laws that have some chance of dealing with this problem? Pitiful slaps on the wrist, even for manslaughter, really try people’s patience with their representatives. Is it that elected officials are heavy drinkers and drivers and don’t want to take the chance of getting caught?

“With intent. cause the death of…..” First Degree Murder Charge excerpt.

“Did accidentally cause the death of …….by stabbing (shooting,strangulation, whatever)” Manslaughter Charge excerpt. A guy leaves a bar drunk, gets yelled at outside the club and pulls a gun killing two bystanders. Can you imagine him being charged with “drunk shooting” or “shooting causing death while impaired.” No, he gets charged with Murder, or at least Manslaughter, his being drunk has nothing to do with the offense charging.

Why the double standard?

Substitute car or drunk driving. Get the picture? These should be no difference either in the charging, or the sentencing.

Mute Swans really getting “muted” to Protect Chesapeake Bay Grasses.

  Mute Swans eat a lot of bay grasses (how much can they eat in an area of thousands of miles of shoreline; and many, many thousands of acres?); Bay grasses are endangered; solution: kill Mute Swans-a very pretty creature by the way, a real vision of calm and contemplation.

  The real problem is that pollution runoff, primarily from farm fertilizers, but also from paved surfaces runoff into streams and thence to the Bay, causes such oxygen deprivation and pollution that bay grasses have been dying back for over a generation, maybe 40 years or more. We know what causes the problem-pollution, but politicians can’t and won’t muster the will to “offend” farmers and livestock ranchers-did I mention the hundreds of millions of chickens on Maryland’s Eastern Shore whose droppings are very nitrogen concentrated, used for fertilizer and whose excess-a lot of excess- runs into the Bay? Homeowners and commercial developers are guilty as well, applying ever increasing amounts of chemicals and pesticides to homes, lawns, parks, apartment landscaping- some of which gets washed into the groundwater, and into streams and rivers that feed the Bay.

  However, Bay environmentalists make the point that swans “crowd out” or at least threaten other endangered species, and swan’s feeding habits disturb, even destroy fragile nurseries for crabs, another endangered species. All in all, for the time being, keeping the population at five hundred seems reasonable; however, the goal should be stopping pollution, restoring all the Bay’s grassy habitats, which would allow all the species to thrive.